


My Worry For Your Sake

by rebelmeg



Category: Iron Man (Movies)
Genre: F/M, Hospitalization, Medical Trauma, Mild Hurt/Comfort, Pepperony - Freeform, Tony Stark Has A Heart
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-30
Updated: 2016-06-30
Packaged: 2018-07-19 03:45:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,864
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7343470
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rebelmeg/pseuds/rebelmeg
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>An explosion at a Stark Industries factory sends Pepper to the hospital, with Tony at her side.</p>
            </blockquote>





	My Worry For Your Sake

**Author's Note:**

> This is set post-Iron Man, but before IM2. Pepper and Tony are still kind of dancing around each other, caring about each other, but still as platonic as it ever was. Despite Tony's best efforts, anyway. Also, yes, I made a deliberate reference to the Slumber Party Coochy shaving gel, if anyone catches that. I couldn't help myself.
> 
> If you ever spot any typos in my fics, PLEASE let me know, I know they occasionally slip in past my proofreading. And I am open to ideas for fic, so if you have a particularly compelling idea, do share and I might be able to do something with it!

Pepper came to in a rush of light, noise, and a shock of intense pain that almost made her dive back into the relief and quiet of the blackness. She had to blink several times to bring anything in to focus, and the first thing she saw was Tony’s face. It was disorienting, and she thought that he was somehow hanging sideways in the air, until she realized she was lying down. 

Once her brain caught up with her, she also recognized her surroundings as a hospital, and the rest of it came to her in a flash. The explosion at the factory, just as she and Tony had arrived for a meeting about re-purposing the materials and machinery for something else, something other than weapons. 

It wasn’t the first time anti-war and anti- weapon protesters had tried to damage their weapons factories. There had been fires, human barriers, bomb threats, even an explosion before. But this time… it was the first time she’d been there when something happened. And the first time anyone had gotten hurt. And the first time since Tony had gone public with Iron Man.

Clearly, there was no pleasing everyone.

Pepper focused on his face above her, searching for some sign of injury on Tony’s face, and his voice finally made it through the cacophony of noises and voices, and she realized he’d been talking to her.

“—coming around. Pepper. Hey. You’re okay, okay? You’re okay, it’s okay.”

Pepper knew him too well, she could hear that thread of… fear in his voice, that he was desperately trying to hide. Things weren’t okay.

“Where am I?” She managed, her eyes flitting in panic all around her, a panic that had arisen once she’d realized how upset Tony was. Obviously she was in a hospital, what with all the doctors or nurses in scrubs, someone trying to tape an IV line on her hand, another one trying to put a mask over her face. She didn’t know which hospital though, and it added to the sense of unease and unbalance. She pushed the oxygen mask and the hand that held it away with a shaking hand, and her frantic gaze landed again on Tony, his dark eyes appearing even darker in his pale face, though he wouldn’t come into focus properly, he was somewhat blurry and-- 

“Pepper,” He said sharply, cutting through some of the chaos in her head and helping her focus on him better. He took the oxygen mask from the hand that held it and carefully placed it on her face. “Listen to me, you are okay. You’re just fine. You got me?”

From what seemed to be a long ways away, an electronic beeping separated itself from the noise, and she looked up to see a heart monitor blinking and beeping like it was going to explode any second. It took her a second to realize that it was her own vitals the machine was tracking. 

The peaks and valleys of her heartbeat were close together when they weren’t erratic, and although she had no idea what all the other numbers for blood pressure and blood oxygen and all those were, she had a vague idea that the fact that most of them were red or blinking wasn’t a good sign. 

The strange part was, after that first minute of sharp pain, now she couldn’t feel anything.

“Pepper!”

She blinked and started, realizing that Tony had been calling her name. 

Reaching down through all the hands and wires and insanity going on above her, Tony put his hands on either side of her face, looking at her hard and giving off the air of a silent command to pay attention.

“Stay with me,” He said, looking between each of her dilated eyes, waiting for her to blink and nod at him before he looked over to the side and at one of the people working on one of the machines around her. “You maybe want to find out what’s taking that doctor so long? Usually an emergency is something that needs to be handled quickly, so do we need to light a bonfire under his ass or something, really motivate him to get down here?”

“He’s coming, Mr. Stark, but we have to stabilize her first before we move her anyway. We’re doing everything we can.”

“Then do it faster.”

Usually Pepper would have rolled her eyes at Tony’s scathing tone of sarcasm and anger, or tried to hide a smile at the unadulterated disrespect that ruled his life, but she was too… disconnected. She was mostly seeing and hearing the things around her, but as if they didn’t exist unless she was looking at or focusing on them, otherwise they disappeared into a fog that was steadily encroaching.

“Pepper.” Tony was saying her name again and she looked back at him. He had a bright light behind him that hadn’t been there before, his black hair standing out starkly against it, and his eyes even darker than ever as they blazed down at her. His mouth was set in a thin line, and even though he would have denied it even under torture, she could see the terror and worry all over his face.

“You stay with me,” He demanded, his hard gaze seeming to fade out a little as his sharp voice that she was so used to rang a little in her ears. “You hear me? You stay with me.”

She tried to nod, but couldn’t move her head so she forced her lips to form words, and she realized they suddenly felt numb. “I will.”

The bright light behind him was getting brighter, and his silhouette was getting fuzzier and faint in contrast. His mouth was moving, he was saying her name but… she couldn’t hear him.

Before she closed her eyes and felt like she was falling sideways, before it all went black again, the last thing she saw was his eyes.

“Pepper!” Tony yelled, and several of the nurses around him jumped. 

“Sir, if you can’t control yourself, you will have to leave.”

“Talk to me,” The stern, calm, yet alert voice of the female surgeon entering the room brought heads around and started off a recitation of medical jargon that Tony didn’t hear. He was looking at Pepper, her slack and pale face, and the shallow rise and fall of her chest.

“Mr. Stark,” The surgeon put her hand on Tony’s shoulder, pulling him back slightly and forcing him to look at her. “You can stay in here for a few minutes while I see what we’re dealing with, but then you’ll have to leave.”

“Just fix her, doc. I don’t care what it takes or what it costs, you fix her.” His voice came out a lot shakier than he’d planned.

“I will do everything I can,” The doctor promised, and the steely determination in her eyes was slightly calming. 

Reaching for Pepper’s hand, Tony squeezed it then stepped back away from her, giving the doctor room.

“Oh lord, Mr. Stark!” One of the nurses exclaimed, looking at Tony in shock and horror, then at the floor.

Looking down, Tony saw a small pool of blood on the floor by his feet, smeared by him walking through it. “What? Is she bleeding that much? I thought you said it was mostly internal.”

One of the ER doctors that had come in with Pepper was suddenly by his side, and Tony cried out in pain and surprise as the doctor put a hand to one of the bloodstains on his shirt. His gloved hand came away red with blood, and it was clear that the collection on the floor had dripped from a wound on Tony’s side.

“I thought it was her blood!” The same nurse said, still obviously horrified.

Suddenly aware that his pain receptors were screaming on his side, Tony yanked his shirt up to see that his entire side, from his ribs to where his slacks came up on his waist was completely covered in blood, and in the mess of red he couldn’t see why.

“Get another surgeon down here, now!” The ER doctor said urgently, grabbing onto Tony’s arm to keep him from moving.

Tony didn’t pay him a bit of attention, and instead stumbled backward as his vision flickered and it felt like the room tilted. “What the hell?” He said to no one, blinking to try and focus on the voices and pandemonium going on around him. He didn’t get an answer, and less than a minute later he was passed out on a gurney, an IV in one arm, a blood pressure cuff on the other, on his way to get x-rays of the shrapnel in his side.

It felt like a long time that he hovered in the dark, unaware of his surroundings, or much of anything at all. But his worry for Pepper somehow lingered, even in his disconnected state.

\------------------

“Two completely different explosions, both times hit by shrapnel that should have killed you, and you are still alive.”

Tony’s eyes flew open, and he looked around in a slight panic.

Hospital room. He was in a hospital room. Wearing a hospital johnny in a hospital bed with an IV in his hand, and Pepper looking at him from her reclined position in the bed next to his.

He gasped, his worry for her surfacing like a submarine. “Pepper.” He quickly tried to sit up, but gasped again then groaned in pain when his side flared up in pain, the mix of a burn and an ache forcing him back down.

“No, don’t sit up!” Pepper was fussing from her bed, looking positively distraught. “What did you do that for?”

“Pepper,” He just said again, the events of the explosion having come back to him in a rush. “How are you? Are you okay? What the hell happened? All I have are some very hazy memories of a very mean nurse sticking a huge needle into my hand and—”

“Tony!” Pepper’s voice cut through his distracted and slightly frantic reel. “I’m okay. I’ve been doing better than you by far, they’ve had to keep you sedated for two days.”

With wide eyes, Tony just looked at her. “No, that’s not possible.”

“It is,” She said, a bit of a smile on her face. “It seems your arc reactor has a diminishing effect on anesthesia, and you kept waking up when they were pulling the shrapnel out of you in surgery and in post-op. You’ve pulled out your stitches twice.”

Well, that explained why his side hurt like the spawn of Satan was trying to claw its way out of there.

While he was working on entire tirades of the indignity of having been put out for two days when no one had even asked his permission or anything, and increased righteous fury that the damn people had probably cut his favorite shirt off him, Tony looked at Pepper and suddenly lost his anger when a completely different emotion started rushing up on him. He struggled with it, he didn’t like dealing with it, but it was bearing down on his chest and making it hard to breathe.

“You’re okay?” He asked, his voice being an absolute bastard and coming out tentative and all soft. He hated that.

Pepper’s eyes softened as she looked back at him, and there was a small smile on her face as she carefully moved her legs off the hospital bed and stood up to go over to him, taking an IV stand with her.

“I’m fine, Tony,” She reassured him in a gentle voice, sitting down gingerly on the edge of his bed. “I’ll be out of here in a few days.” Her hand landed gently on his, and he tried not to look as desperate as he felt when he turned his hand over and clutched at her.

“Let’s not do this again. There are so many things I would rather be doing, and if I thought I could get us sleeping in the same room together, there are so many other ways I would have preferred to try before jumping right to medical trauma. Not my favorite thing.” The words spilled out of him in a rush, each word pushing the other one to get out faster. At least it made him feel more like himself.

“I don’t think you’re ever going to have a chance at that now,” A voice said from the door, and they both turned their heads to see Rhodey coming into the room, smiling. “She’s seen you naked, she knows what is or is NOT going on under that gown.”

“I know it’s intimidating, but don’t worry, I’m very gentle.” Tony assured Pepper, mostly looking at Rhodey though, with a wry smile on his face.

“On that note,” Pepper sighed, getting up and going back to her own bed, “I think I’ll call the doctor to come check you out. There was talk of a rectal exam.”

“That’s mean, Pep.” Tony said dryly as Rhodey started laughing.

\--------------------

The doctor came and went fairly quickly, checking Tony over thoroughly as she chatted with he and Pepper and Rhodey. A male nurse came in while the surgeon was there, joining the conversation as he went over to Pepper and checked her vitals.

Tony glared at the male nurse as he took Pepper’s blood pressure, smiling at her as she said something, making a note on a chart. Tony always hated it when guys paid attention to Pepper, but he especially hated it when his side was being held together with staples and stitches and he couldn’t do anything about it. And that guy had, like, four inches and at least fifty pounds of muscle on Tony, which didn’t help the situation at all. Tony liked his lean-ly muscular physique, thank you very much, and he’d never heard anyone complain, but honestly. The Captain America lookalike over there was practically a magnet for women.

Tony hoped the guy’s IQ was in the double digits. Or lower. And that he had an atrocious vocabulary.

The nurse finally finished up whatever the heck he was doing, patting Pepper’s knee in a way that Tony deemed way too familiar and likely sexual harassment-related, in his opinion, and left the room with the surgeon.

Pepper glanced once at Tony, then rolled her eyes and grinned as she leaned back against her pillow and smiled. “He’s gay, you know.”

Tony and Rhodey both blinked in surprise. “What?”

“Uh huh. Been eyeballing you since you got here.”

Rhodey started snickering, covering his mouth with his hand.

The jealousy Tony had been feeling abruptly took a turn into discomfort. “Um, that’s… weird.”

“Yep. Pretty sure he got a look up your gown while you were passed out.”

Oh, this just made him feel so wrong. He was a big fan of consent, very big fan, and he had definitely not signed off on that. “I am going to arrange to have him disabled. And discharged. And dismembered.”

Pepper was grinning in a way that he rarely got to see, and she chuckled a little at him. “I’m kidding, Tony. He was a complete professional the whole time. I promise.”

There was still a deep sense of discomfort about the whole thing (he really didn’t like being ogled unless he knew about it, regardless of gender), and the next time the nurse came into the room, Tony became so interested in the tiles on the ceiling, or anything other than meeting the eyes of the guy, that Pepper laughed at him. His only saving grace was that Rhodey had gone and wasn’t there to laugh at him too.

He was having such a bad week.

\---------------------

Another sharp, painful pull from his side made Tony huff in frustration and throw his specially designed razor in the sink, just as he heard Pepper call his name from his bedroom door.

“Jarvis, start working up a prototype for headgear that contains a shaving apparatus, use the model for that tooth-brushing helmet that didn’t work out. Maybe with the new tech I can work the kinks out of that. Maybe we’ll use lasers or something.”

“Tony?”

“In here.”

“What are you doing?” Pepper came through the bedroom and stood in the door to the bathroom, looking at him questioningly. It said something that she wasn’t fazed at all that he was in nothing but a towel around his waist. She’d seen him in less, to be sure, and doing far more scandalous things than shaving. Or attempting to shave…

“I’m trying to shave, but I can’t raise my arm high enough or my scar pulls and the doctor told me not to do that and Jarvis keeps getting after me for it and I just want to shave my damn face!” The whole situation was really starting to frustrate him, and it came through in his run-on sentences. "It's itching."

“Tony, you don’t have to raise your arm that high.”

“Yes I do, I can’t get this line right.”

Pepper rolled her eyes a little. “I really don’t think it’s necessary for you to have your perfectly trimmed goatee when you’re going to be in bed for the next week.”

“Come on, Tony Stark IS the goatee. And the reputation and the cars and the suit and all that, but mostly the goatee.”

“No, Tony Stark IS obnoxious. Here,” Pepper held her hand out for the razor, one that Tony had made specifically to do the detailed, sharp lines of his trademark goatee. “Let me.”

Tony regarded her with slight apprehension before he handed it over, worried for a moment that she’d just shave him bare, and Pepper gestured for him to sit on the padded bench against the wall across from the sink. “Look, you actually do have a reason for this to be in here. Has this bench even ever been used aside from now?”

He smirked at her, cocking an eyebrow. “What do you think?”

“That’s enough of that, thank you.” Pepper squeezed a small amount of Tony’s shave gel onto her hand, and it foamed up as she rubbed at it. “Is this the only stuff you’ve got?”

“Uh, yeah?”

“Well, no wonder you can’t get a clean line, how are you supposed to see what you’re doing through opaque white foam? Hold on, let me get something.”

Tony watched Pepper go, then looked down at his shaving gel with confusion. It had been working just fine for him for years, what was the deal?

Pepper returned after a couple minutes with a small white bottle in her hands with a red and black label.

“What’s that?” He looked at the bottle suspiciously.

“My shave cream from my travel kit. It goes on clear so I’ll actually be able to see what I’m doing.” Pepper squeezed out a dime-sized dot of the white-ish liquid onto her hand, and Tony recoiled.

“But it’s girl stuff!”

“It’s not exclusively for women, Tony, men use it too.”

“What men?”

“The kind that have no problem sharing.” Pepper’s hands darted out too fast for Tony to dodge, and before he knew it, his lower face was slathered with the smooth, slippery cream. The subtle scent wafted through the air, and Tony sniffed at it hesitantly.

“That… doesn’t smell that girly, actually. In fact, that’s pretty gender neutral.”

Pepper rolled her eyes again and picked up the razor, looking over Tony’s face carefully. “I told you.”

“You should know me well enough by now to know I don’t trust things people tell me.”

“Of course not, you have to discover it for yourself and to hell with any repercussions.” She put a hand up by his ear, stretching the skin of his cheek taut as the put the razor to it. “Stop talking.”

“Oh, come on, you’ve learned how to do everything else with me talking, this should be easy.”

“Long as you don’t mind your jaw slightly sliced.”

Tony shut up with a little smirk. And to entertain himself, he picked up the bottle of Pepper’s shaving cream and looked at it. His eyebrows raised as he read the label.

“Pepper. This is called Coochy.”

She wasn’t even fazed as she drew the razor smoothly over his jaw, the blades scraping flush with his skin and taking off the rest of the uneven remnants of stubble. “Yep. I just put my Coochy on your face, how do you feel about that.”

It was a good thing she had just lifted the razor from his skin, because he gave a startled laugh that would have definitely made a clean shave necessary.

“I can’t believe you just said that! That is the most outrageous, suggestive thing I have ever heard come out of your mouth, and that includes that time I eavesdropped on your conversation with your boyfriend.”

“He wasn’t my boyfriend. He was, well, a one night stand. Clearly, you have rubbed off on me a little bit. And I’m also on painkillers right now, so they’re kind of lowering my inhibitions a little bit.”

Tony’s gaze immediately sharpened on her, concern in those dark eyes. “Painkillers? You’re still hurting? Shouldn’t you be in bed? Jarvis, should she be up right now?”

She cut right over the AI's response. “Tony, I’m fine. I was just sore, and the doctor told me not to be a hero about taking the medication, I should take them if I need them, and level down to ibuprofen and acetaminophen when I feel ready. His exact words.”

“Oh.” Tony’s shoulders relaxed a little bit, but he kept half an eye on Pepper as she continued to work the fine-bladed razor over his face. Her face was relaxed, and there was a familiar focus in her eyes as she wielded the razor. “You sure?”

Her eyes flicked up to meet his for a moment. “I’m sure, Tony.”

There was silence for a moment save for the sound of the razor on Tony’s stubble, then a bit of a grin lifted his lips. “If you think about it, it’s a good thing we’re both on pretty strict orders to take it easy right now.”

“Why’s that?” She murmured a little distractedly, taking care with the angles on his chin.

“Because with me being me, and you being somewhat inhibited, we could probably find ourselves in a pretty difficult situation. You know, sex-wise.”

Pepper didn’t even blink. “You keep telling yourself that, Mr. Stark.”

“I will, Ms. Potts.”

\-----------------

Tony was running his hand over his face, inspecting Pepper’s work as she left his room, and he waited until she was gone before he spoke to his AI.

“Jarvis, she did a better job than I do. I can’t let that woman be better at more of my life than she already is, I need a better razor.”

“Of course, sir. I’ll have the mechanical breakdown prepared for you as soon as you’re cleared for work in the lab.” The AI sounded a little smug, obviously pleased at his attempts to make Tony, *gasp!* follow medical advice.

“Cute, Jarvis.”

“Thank you, sir.”


End file.
